Basu: Farmers rejecting biotech ought to be heard

Oct. 26, 2012

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At a World Food Prize Foundation event last week that brought 600 guests to a Marriott banquet hall, Gov. Terry Branstad spoke of Iowa as the food and agriculture capital of the world, and he credited the Green Revolution with saving a billion lives.

Later that evening, an Iowa farmer named George Naylor shared a different perspective with some 40 people at a forum in the Des Moines library. “The World Food Prize tells a story that there’s not enough food to go around,” he said. “There’s never been as much food as there is now.”

True, the prize, founded by Iowa’s Norman Borlaug, who developed the high-yield crop varieties that transformed agriculture, puts Iowa on the map. It brings foreign dignitaries to Des Moines every year to discuss agricultural output.

But the view it perpetuates, that high-yield agriculture, relying on GMOs, pesticides and other chemicals, is ending hunger, is increasingly challenged. Despite its high-yield crops, Iowa isn’t adequately feeding its own people. Over 14 percent of Iowa households don’t get enough to eat.

Even philanthropist Howard Buffett, speaking at the Hunger Summit where Branstad made his remarks, acknowledged the irony that while America exports more wheat, corn and soybeans than any country, people here are hungry. He used to think the key to solving hunger was improving agricultural production techniques. But he concluded the problem is much more complicated.

He didn’t go into it. Perhaps he was thinking about the event’s sponsors — Monsanto, which owns the patent for the vast majority of GMO soybean and corn seeds, the Farm Bureau and other representatives of big agriculture. Speakers at several alternative events last week, however, were outspoken.

Hunger happens when agriculture is “treated as an industrial venture,” said activist Frank Cordaro, of Occupy the World Food Prize, which organized the library panel. (I wish Occupy members had stuck to smart dialogue rather than later trying to break into the World Food Prize ceremony and getting arrested.)

Panel speakers talked about small farmers’ inability to compete with big industrial concerns, to feed themselves. “Herbicides kill the weeds, but they weed out farmers,” said Naylor. “They increase competition between farmers.” Naylor also said Iowa doesn’t feed the world since its corn and soybeans are not for human consumption.

The alternative events, which went generally unnoticed by media, showed a side the World Food Prize generally doesn’t, but should. Whether in Iowa or Korea, small farmers described struggling to stay afloat as government policies favor large agricultural concerns and corporations.

Barb Kalbach, a fourth generation farmer in Adair County, said federal farm policies in the 1980s drove thousands of farmers out. As rural population declined, schools, churches and clinics closed. Jeomok Bak, chairwoman of the Korean Women’s Peasant Association, talked of similar ripple effects in rural Korea, as government has promoted large farms.

“Many have committed suicide because they can’t make a living and because of growing debt,” she said through an interpreter.

Bak was awarded the Food Sovereignty Prize this month in New York. It’s given by a group of anti-hunger organizations to honor efforts to put farmers in control of what to grow and how. Bak made appearances at several Des Moines events last week.

A U.S. free trade agreement extended to Korea in the past year has yet to show its impact, she said. But a similar one with Chile has forced grape farmers to stop growing grapes because of competition from Chilean grapes. The same could happen to rice farmers, since rice is Korea’s main U.S. import and one of Korea’s main crops. Though GMO seeds are not legal in Korea, imported corn and soybeans grown with them is fed to Korean cattle.

One of the worst fallouts, she said, is that a cooperative farming culture has been replaced by a competitive one.

Back here in Iowa, crop monocultures have led to increased need for herbicides and insecticides that weren’t necessary when farmers practiced biodiversity, says organic dairy farmer Francis Thicke of Fairfield. Mark Bittman’s column in last Sunday’s New York Times echoed the point about biodiversity.

He used data from Iowa State University’s Leopold Center showing that growing corn and soybeans on three- or four-year cycles instead of the every-other-year rotation, and including oats, alfalfa and livestock, led to much better yields. There’s less need for nitrogen fertilizer and herbicides. But Bittman suggested the U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn’t talk about that because of connections to chemical firms.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack rejected that claim and said it’s up to producers to decide how they grow crops.

The World Food Prize has been given to people who challenge government policies. David Beckmann, its 2010 laureate, has openly decried farm subsidies. And the foundation deserves credit for adding the Hunger Summit. But it needs to go deeper and address hunger’s root causes, including the growing concentration of agriculture in a few hands.

Iowans help subsidize the prize with tax money, and regardless of who the other underwriters are, people promoting sustainability and rejecting biotechnology also deserve to be heard.